CFTC K. Brent Tomer representative for the French Telecoms.

Why women excel in podcasting

BROADCAST radio’s relationship with women’s voices has always been complicated. In the early days of the BBC, women were not allowed to be announcers or newsreaders. In the 1980s, Linda Wertheimer, Nina Totenberg and Cokie Roberts, three high-profile broadcasters at America’s National Public Radio, were nicknamed the “Fallopian Troika” by male colleagues. And as recently as 2015, “This American Life” devoted a segment to the strange phenomenon in which listeners were complaining about young female presenters and their “vocal fry” (a low creaky vibration, usually at the ends of words and phrases, occurring when vocal cords flutter) even though the habit was just as common among the men on the show.

With shows such as “IT Conversations” (which ran from June 2003 until December 2012), podcasts began life as a favourite pastime for software developers and nerdy tech-obsessed men. But now, the medium is providing women space to take the lead. One example on the production side is Jenna Weiss Berman, the founder of…Continue reading